Hi everyone, welcome back! I couldn’t publish a new post last Friday as I was traveling but a couple of weeks ago I examined how a human mind is always on the hunt to find reasons to be fearful and used last month’s presidential election to show how the mind is capable of creating all the fear and fearful thoughts even though your own life is not directly impacted by outside events (yet). This week, since it was Thanksgiving in U.S. last week, I would like to examine ‘gratitude’ and why it is even more important to practice it during the tough times in our lives.
Belief: I am facing so many challenging situations and people in my life; I don’t see anything that I can be grateful for!
Most human beings don’t think about the good things or people they have in their lives and are grateful for them even during good times, let alone during hard times. A lot of times, people are so busy moving on from one thing in their to-do list or goals to another that once they have accomplished one of their wish-list items, they don’t take the time to pause and be grateful for what the Universe just made possible for them. Other times, they think that just because they worked hard, they deserved what just became possible for them and therefore out of arrogance, don’t think it is important to thank the Universe. Whatever your reason may be to not be able to focus more on being grateful, what I have understood so far in life is that whether or not you are grateful during good times in your life, it’s the challenging times which need us to focus more on gratitude. Gratitude for the things or people we have in our lives today despite whatever or whoever you are dealing with in that moment. Let’s explore further how gratitude can help shift your perspective and actually help you deal with your challenging situation or person.
So let’s take an example of how a human life looks like if you only see it from the perspective of challenges. Let’s imagine that this is your life where after you were born, you had a childhood which was limited in means because of your parents limited income. So, when you went to school and interacted with your friends, you felt less than because your parents were not as rich. This probably was the first challenge you thought you had in life – not having well-off parents!
Then when you grew up and were ready for college, you had to struggle to acquire the best possible education because your parents didn’t have the right connections and money to get you into the prestigious colleges in your country. Hence, this you thought of this as another challenge that you had to face in life.
Then you graduated from college only to find out that a good job is not that easy to find and hence you settled for any job just so you can get your foot in the door. Your mind defined this as another challenge!
Then when you finally found a decent job, you got married but to your horror, you found out very soon that staying married requires adjustments from you that you never imagined even in your wildest dreams 🙂
Then when you finally sort out your marital issues, you decide it’s time to add to your family and so you start trying for a baby which to your amazement takes years and as a result takes you through emotional pain that you never knew existed. Hence another challenge!
Finally, you had a baby and you were on top of the world until you discovered it’s no joke to raise a kid which requires your non-stop emotional and physical presence! So, this became another challenge that you had to face in your life!
I think you got the point folks :-)! We humans think of everything from a perspective of challenges; however, if we can try to instead shift our perspective and think about each challenging situation or person from a perspective of ‘what is it trying to teach me’, our entire lives will look completely different. Our lives will look different because now we will be try to welcome and accept whatever life is giving us and think of it as a gift instead of fearing everything and everyone when we think of them as challenging! Let me explain using the same examples that I just used above to help you understand how you can focus on the lessons and stay in gratitude even when a situation appears to be challenging.
If you had a childhood which was limited in means because of your parents limited income and you had to struggle to acquire the best possible education, maybe the Universe was trying to teach you ‘to have faith in yourself and something bigger than you’ to achieve your dreams!
When you graduated from college and struggled to find a good job, maybe the Universe was conspiring ‘to match you with that awesome boss’ who you need to be able to guide you towards success!
When you got married and had a rough start with your partner, maybe the Universe was trying to teach you ‘how to give and receive love’ because the basis of any relationship is love!
When you had a hard time becoming a parent, maybe the Universe was trying to teach you ‘how to be patient’ because apparently that’s the one trait that makes you an amazing parent 🙂
When you had a baby and discovered it’s no joke to raise a kid, maybe the Universe was trying to teach you ‘how to make mistakes and still love unconditionally’ because that’s what being a parent is all about 🙂
So, do you see the shift? If you do, based on my learning in life, when you shift your perspective, the very first thing that will happen is you will stop fighting with all the challenging situations or people and when you stop fighting is when you find peace and love and gratitude! So, be grateful for your challenges as much as you are for your successes and when you are grateful is when you will live your best life!
And as always feel free to leave a comment if you feel like leaving one. And until next week, try to make the shift 🙂
